justhere

Or because you have one, you get complacent and/or overconfident, and get nailed a few times with instant-on. Thereby costing you more than if you got caught a couple of times because you weren't using one.

That said, I don't use one anymore because I don't trust myself not to fall into the above trap.

TGarza

Unlike auto racing, being first is not the best position since the first car will be the first one pulled over. I recently saw this happen on I70 east of Columbus. I was a couple of cars back.

tentseller

Auto racing: First is the best position only at the checker. You don't want to waste your resources hauling everyone around.

Silver Fox

For the trivial amount of time it saves these days I just don't see the point. I set the cruise control to no more than +5 over the posted limit and just poodle along not having to worry. On the UK motorways, before speed cameras, the unofficial speed limit was 80 (70 + 10% + 3 mph) according to every traffic policeman I ever spoke with. Unless you are undertaking or lane swapping erratically that is. But now I just don't bother speeding. Especially as we have so many cameras and variable speed limits creeping in.

jsds

I, unfortunately, live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where radar detectors are prohibited. I started with an Escort Redline and I loved it. I purchased a Redline EX soon after it was released. I use band segmentation, with both. The Redline is "tight enough" so it's not picked up by "radar detector detectors," such as the Spectre. Overall performance is great - on the wide-open and flat Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the alerts start at about five miles out. In town, it varies from one-half to three miles, depending on terrain.

I'm sure that you'll have good results with the Max 360. Let us know how it goes!

davie355

But the officer can still see your detector in the windshield...

COSPILOT

I haven't used a detector in 20 + years, as I feel it's pointless in this era, but I was pretty darn quick to remove the one I had before he/she could see it. 30 plus years of driving, zero tickets.

gfunkdave

Come to think of it, I haven't gotten a speeding ticket since that night the cop got me with his instant-on radar when I was in high school.

kennycrudup

V1 here too, since 2005. Still great, and IIRC they just did a SW update for me not that long ago (2011?) too (and I want to say for free).

... and it's not about citations, it's about convictions

KRSW

I've not used a radar detector in 20+ years myself, but I'd suggest finding one which allows you to selectively ignore certain radio bands. Some cars' driver assist systems use some of the same radio frequencies as police radar and I'd imagine it'd drive you nuts on the highway. I've not seen it happen with my current car, but have been in others that did, and watched the driver in front of us rip their radar detector off their windshield and throw it to the floor after it kept going off.

I'm with Silver Fox on this one -- I have my car's cruise control set to do whatever it's cameras read on the speed limit signs + 5 mph. Letting the car worry about the speed limit signs: peaceful and priceless.

Need

Use Waze. All cops stopped at the side of freeways or streets are reported here in SoCal. The only thing you have to watch out are the ones on the road coming from behind you. The only time I heard people get caught even with Waze is on the way to Mammoth. I was told there is certain cellular dead zone and that's where the cops are hiding. You can't report them when you have no data.

cardsqc

Waze helps if you're in an area that has enough other people using waze to accumulate enough data to be useful. Start getting outside of larger towns and it becomes far less useful. Driving the rural roads around here? All but useless. I haven't really found that the cops around here really tend to use instant on all that much, but rather just leave the radar on constantly - although sometimes at a lower level. I figure they feel a) they get enough people to go after even doing that since lots of people don't use radar detectors, and b) it gets those using radar detectors to slow down, so if the real reason for patrol is to improve safety, that's a win in their book. (Not that that's the real reason they're out there, money of course is.)

Laser seemed to get pretty popular for a while, but I honestly don't see it anywhere near as often as I used to.

The biggest annoyance now is all the honda/acura and gm type cars (especially cadillacs) that use K band for their blind spot monitoring.

gfunkdave

I always wondered how that little light on the side mirror worked.

cardsqc

Apparently it varies by manufacturer, but at least some of them are using a radar system in the K band range. Not all of them do. Honda's and Acura's seem to be the most cursed by people with radar detectors, because they seem to be able to punch through just about any filtering in the detector. I find with GM products that Cadillac's especially seem to trigger the detector, with other GM models being less likely for some reason (don't know if they're using different systems or what - could just be that percentage-wise the Cadillac is more likely to have a BSM system). A lot of other brands must use a different frequency, because they don't seem to cause problems.

timfountain

Poodle along. classic! I prefer to Husky along myself. Pesky autocorrect. Pootle. Pootle. There.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/...english/pootle